Bleeding management is important during surgery. Blood loss may cause innumerable problems in patients, whereas the presence of blood at undesirable locations is harmful to normal tissues or may impede the ability of doctors who check the surgery sites. This bleeding may also be problematic even during the minimally invasive surgical procedure (e.g., laparoscopic surgery).
Gastrointestinal bleeding is a frequently encountered clinical problem. At least 80% of gastrointestinal bleeding cases occur in the upper gastrointestinal tract. The upper gastrointestinal tract bleeding refers to a disease in which lesions of esophagus, stomach, and duodenum are bleeding, causing blood vomiting or bloody excrement. The endoscopy can confirm bleeding lesions in 90% or more of gastrointestinal tract bleeding cases, and 40-50% of gastrointestinal tract bleeding cases are known to be caused by stomach ulcers or duodenum bleeding.
In recent years, gastric or colorectal polypectomy or mucosectomy and endoscopic operation for the treatment of early gastric cancer and colorectal cancer have been frequently conducted. During or after these operations, the bleeding causes people to receive emergency surgery or even to die.
In recent years, endoscopic hemostasis has been increasingly used to treat bleeding and gastrointestinal bleeding during the surgical procedure, bleeding occurring when tissue is taken for histological examination, and the like. The hemostasis using an endoscope is conducted by approaching an in vivo inserted endoscopic conduit (catheter) to a mucosal lesion in need of hemostasis and then administering and spraying an appropriate hemostatic agent through the conduit.
Medical powder sprayers have been developed to achieve this purpose. One of the medical powder sprayers, using the same principle as a coating spray, is operated in such a manner that a hemostatic agent is injected into a tube provided in a sprayer and then compressed air is supplied to the tube to spray and apply the hemostatic agent to the lesion. However, in such a powder sprayer, having too little of the drug that is charged in the tube cannot give an effective therapeutic effect, while having too much of the drug causes the clogging of the tube and thus the drug is not sprayed.
A powder spray device that improves such a powder sprayer is disclosed in Korean Patent Registration No. 10-0329333. The powder spray device is operated in such a manner that a drug container is mounted upside down on the top of an apparatus and then air is supplied into the drug container, so that the air introduced into the drug container disturbs the drug in the drug container and discharged to a discharge port together with the drug.
The powder spray device reduces the clogging of the conduit and enhances the spraying power as compared with a conventional sprayer adopting a coating spray manner, but the powder spray device is operated in a 1-way air flow manner in which the air moving into the drug container causes the discharge of a powdered drug out of the drug container and the spray of the powdered drug through the conduit, and thus it has difficulty in obtaining satisfactory spraying power.
In the case of using the powder sprayer, water may flow back to the medical conduit inserted into the body since water, such as body fluid, exists in the body, and a powder having high hygroscopicity clumps together due to the moisture, causing a risk of clogging the conduit. The moisture that comes into the conduit is difficult to remove due to the surface tension, but the conventional powder sprayers including the powder spray device have no technical means to solve the problems.
Throughout the entire specification, many papers and patent documents are referenced and their citations are represented. The disclosure of the cited papers and patent documents are entirely incorporated by reference into the present specification, and the level of the technical field within which the present invention falls and the details of the present invention are described more clearly.